Haiti's Frogs, Losing Habitat, Find a Home at Philadelphia Zoo– via Herp Digest

September 28, 2012|By Faye Flam, Inquirer Staff Writer

Haiti has lost 99 percent of its native forest, but every time Pennsylvania State University biologist Blair Hedges explores the tiny patches that remain, he finds dozens of species of frogs, some previously unknown to science.

With their forest habitat fast disappearing, the only future for these creatures may be here in Philadelphia.

On Wednesday, a group of Haitian government officials and environmental activists visited their country's native frogs at the Philadelphia Zoo, the only facility in the world raising these critically endangered animals in captivity.

"We're hoping to show the Haitians that these frogs have value," Hedges said. Over several expeditions, he and Carlos Martinez, a zoo conservation biologist, have brought 154 live frogs from Haiti. Their number at the zoo has climbed to an estimated 1,400. Of 10 original species, nine have produced young.

Reptile keeper Joyce Foreman works with Martinez to figure out what to feed the frogs and their tiny offspring. In an adjoining room, Parker shows the various insects she's raising in plastic containers.

The zoo has tried fruit flies, she said, but the frogs tend to ignore them. Other menu options are live pill bugs, crickets, bean beetles, and springtails.

Parker and Martinez have experimented with temperature and humidity, hoping to re-create the conditions of the cool mountain forests where the frogs were caught. "We don't know the exact ecology," Martinez said. "We're learning along the way."

The most prolific species are the La Hotte frog, the breast-spot frog, and a tuneful frog named after Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart.

Another musical species, the La Hotte glanded frog, has a metallic chime to its call, Parker said, but this creature is more difficult to breed. The offspring are tiny and so far haven't survived in captivity.

The frogs are not currently on display, though some hardier species may become part of an exhibit.

While North American frogs go through a tadpole stage, many tropical species either give live birth to tiny frogs or lay eggs that hatch into froglets, Martinez said.

Some of the Haitian frogs are so small the adults can fit on a quarter. Some are greenish, some reddish, some spotted, some pudgy, and some leggy.

Haitian officials asked about the living conditions and the frogs' safety. Lyonel Valburn, the director general of the Haitian Ministry of Agriculture, said he was pleased he could count on Philadelphia to take care of Haiti's frogs.

The zoo is no substitute for the rich forests that once made Haiti a paradise. The nation is home to 50 known species of frog, though Hedges has found enough new ones to suspect Haiti is losing frogs that will never be known to humanity. On an evening trek, he once discovered five new species.

Though Haiti has set aside national parks, the government hasn't been able to enforce the boundaries, Hedges said. People still come in and cut down trees to make charcoal, which they depend on for cooking.

After the morning tour, Hedges and Martinez spent the afternoon with the Haitian officials, trying to work out some plan to preserve Haiti's tiny but diverse patches of forest. Along with the agriculture official were two people from the division of parks and soils, and leaders of the Haiti Audubon Society.

The participants discussed many possibilities, including educational programs, building "ecolodges" for tourism and research, farming trees for charcoal, and paying people not to destroy the forest.

Some scientists view Haiti as a microcosm of the world and an example of what can happen when human beings put extreme stress on the environment.

Hedges said he and other biologists were not balancing the lives of humans against those of frogs. If people remain dependent on cutting trees, then when the last forests collapse, they will die too.

The mystery of the Mount Laurel lizards solved

The mystery of the Mount Laurel lizards solved

PEG QUANN
Burlington County Times

MOUNT LAUREL - It's a whodunit with a herpetological flair. Little greenish-brown lizards - Italian wall lizards by name - have been scurrying under rocks, porches, and garages in the Mount Laurel area for several years.

But where did they come from?

Rumors suggested that Italian immigrants brought them as pets, or that a Rutgers University student researcher released them.

Then last spring, Russell Burke of Hofstra University on New York's Long Island sent the Burlington County Times a letter. Burke is a biologist with a special interest in herpetology, the study of reptiles and amphibians. He wanted help in his research on the nonnative lizards in Mount Laurel.

Did anyone really know how they got here from the Mediterranean? he asked.

When the paper ran his appeal in a June 25 story, he received several e-mails, including one that appears to have solved the mystery.

A township resident acknowledged that he released about 120 lizards in 1984 to combat a variety of insects seen around his parents' home on Canterbury Road.

"They were released at my parents' house. ... They would eat the spiders, ticks, earwigs. Basically, my thing was control of pests around our house and establishing them in our development," the man said in an interview last week. His name is being withheld because his parents still live in the neighborhood.

He did it "as an experiment ... to help with insects and just out of curiosity, to see if they'd take to our environment."

At the time, he was a 22-year-old former college student with an interest in herpetology. He had kept lizards as pets as a teenager. In reading the "North American Field Guide to Reptiles and Amphibians," he discovered that the wall lizards - good insect eaters that had been brought to the United States by pet suppliers - had already been released or got loose in Philadelphia, New York City and Hempstead, N.Y. He figured they would help reduce the populations of ticks and other insects attracted to the rock gardens his dad had included in landscaping around the family's home.

The former student visited a wholesale amphibian supplier in the Bronx - now out of business - where he saw the imported lizards kept in cages "full of mites." He ordered about three batches of 40 each, glad that he could give the little green and brown reptiles their freedom.

Did the supplier ask why he wanted so many lizards?

"They didn't question me about anything," he said. "I sent in my money."

Once the lizards were set free, they scattered throughout the neighborhood, including setting up residence at the Alice Paul Institute on Hooten Road, where Valerie Buickerood, acting director, said sometimes she can see them near the porch.

"It's hit or miss," she said.

The man didn't release them as a prank, he said. But he didn't inform his parents' neighbors, either.

The new arrivals quickly adapted to the suburban development of colonial and split-level homes. It's a perfect setting for wildlife, with a small stream meandering through the development and woods and farmland surrounding it. The neighborhood is in walking distance to the municipal complex across Mount Laurel Road. Even there, the little lizards have taken up residence. One darted through the shrubbery and stone landscaping along the side of the township building as a visitor went by. Quick as a camera flash, it disappeared under a bush.

"The lizards don't appear to be a problem for the township," Township Manager Jennifer Blumenthal said. "We've had no complaints."

Pat Halbe, township clerk and director of the Paws Farm Nature Center on Hainesport-Mount Laurel Road, said one of the lizards actually seems to know when she's passing by the building's doorway.

"It's almost like a daily ritual. When I come back from lunch, it runs in front of me," Halbe said.

Some residents have taken a liking to them.

"If they eat mosquitoes, let's breed some more of these little guys," said an online comment on the phillyBurbs.com/bct website, where the story also ran.

Bill Christy, who resides in the Canterbury Road development, isn't so sure about that.

"They're all over the neighborhood," Christy said. "We never knew what they were."

The lizards seem to have set up home under his garage and on a neighbor's property as well.

"I don't want them to get into the house," he said.

"As the years went by, there were reports of more and more in the development," said the former resident who released them. Now he occasionally sees them in his own neighborhood, a mile or so from his parents' home. He knows they are eating insects from the excrement they leave behind.

The New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection is keeping a close watch on the lizards to see how quickly their habitat is spreading. The agency doesn't plan any action against the man who released them.

DEP spokesman Larry Ragonese said the man was young at the time and "seemed more like a kid goofing around." The DEP was grateful that he contacted the agency so it knows where the lizards came from.

"The fact that he stepped forward and let us know how this began - it's a bonus piece of information, so we're not taking any action," Ragonese said.

"Our wildlife people tell us the lizards are harmless. We're encouraging people to let them be. It's better to appreciate them on your driveway than if you put them into an aquarium," he said.

Anyone who has a problem with the lizards should try to "gently" remove their nest from their property, Ragonese said.

While the state considers them harmless and without local predators, Burke is concerned if their range of habitat expands. The lizards may have been spotted as far as 10 miles away. Burke is tracking their potential locations from the e-mails he has received from area residents. If possible, he'd like residents to take photos of the quick-moving reptiles.

In Southampton, a couple who moved here from California e-mailed Burke to say they've seen the lizards fighting in the trees in their yard.

Have the lizards affected the insect population?

While the man who released them thinks they have, Burke said, "These lizards probably do nothing to reduce pest insect populations."

He thinks they eventually will interact with native lizards, including two skink species and the fence lizards found in rural areas not far from Mount Laurel and which are common in the Pine Barrens.

"As the wall lizards spread, they will eventually come into contact with the native lizards and competition will occur. The wall lizards are not live-bearers; they lay eggs. The idea that the released lizards had mites is a little scary. Those mites can easily jump to native reptiles; however, they are not in any way dangerous to humans," Burke said.

"The scientific community's view of the release (deliberate or accidental) of animals and plants into new places has changed over the years," Burke wrote in a Hofstra publication. "In the past, amateur and professional scientists often actively promoted the introduction of foreign species into new habitats. + In more recent years, the list of introductions with disastrous results has grown. Invasive species are now recognized as one of the most important cause of native species' endangerment and extinction."

As a species, the wall lizard is known to adapt quickly to different regions. When introduced on an island in the Mediterranean, it developed a new digestive feature to help it eat greenery in just 36 years, according to University of Massachusetts biologist Duncan Irschick in an article in Science Daily. In Italy and other Mediterranean regions, they are known to live in stone crevices and walls. And they like to be near people.

Here, they've also adapted to living in wooden structures. A population of them was discovered in Philadelphia in the 1930s nesting in the railroad ties along train tracks in West Philadelphia. But a fire in the 1960s may have destroyed that group, said Ned Gilmore of the Academy of Natural Sciences in Philadelphia.

Burke said the lizards near Hofstra survive the New York winters by burrowing underground. He'd like to know if their South Jersey cousins do the same thing. Since he made his request about the Mount Laurel group, Burke has received feedback from several residents. Anyone who has had contact with the lizards can reach him at biorlb@hofstra.edu.

"This is all very interesting and lots of fun," he noted. "It has definitely been a help to my research."

http://www.phillyburbs.com/news/news_details/article/26/2010/july/11/the-mystery-of-the-mount-laurel-lizards-solved.html